Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are known and typically utilize short-range transmission protocols, such as Bluetooth and/or IEEE 802.11, to communicate information among WLAN devices. WLANs are being employed for simple wireless connections of peripheral devices and are being used in self-organizing piconets in which mobile WLAN devices connect to fixed base stations or other mobile devices.
In addition, wireless mobile devices are being made with integrated WLAN transceivers and wireless wide area network (WWAN) transceivers, such as cellular and/or paging transceivers. However, such devices typically use the differing transceivers in conventional manners to communicate over their respective networks.
Some wireless mobile devices, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones, now employ a small, low cost WLAN transceiver allowing access to the Internet or other wide area network through a personal computer or other suitable Bluetooth port. For such devices, wide area coverage (or at least wide area data coverage is sacrificed for lower power consumption, size, and cost, and little or no access fees. Due to the small coverage areas of WLANs, it is very difficult for WLAN base sites to cover geographic areas as large as a city or even a significant part of a large city.
Thus, it would be desirable to improve the coverage areas of conventional WLAN communication systems in a cost effective manner.